The Prosperity plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Partly cloudy
Mostly cloudy
Partly cloudy
Sunny; warmer
Sunny
Partly cloudy
Mostly sunny
79° on Nov. 16, 1918, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1893. Next is 79° in 1958.
Prosperity’s center stands about 2,450 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,950 ft to 2,580 ft, a difference of 630 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Walnut Knob, about 3,480 ft, 15 miles east-northeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows New River Formation (sandstone), from the Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 10×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 21 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 1 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.3 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Prosperity reaches the Gulf of America by way of Cranberry Creek, Piney Creek, the New River, the Kanawha, the Ohio and the Mississippi: about 1,830 river miles.
970 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Prosperity; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Prosperity has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 81° in July; winter nights fall to about 24° in January. A normal year brings about 56 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Prosperity normally reaches 54° and falls to 35°. The record high is 78°, in 1993; the record low 8°, in 1986. The most rain on this date, 1.25 in, fell in 1915.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1893 from the Beckley Area threaded record (Beckley Raleigh County Airport, 6 miles southeast). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
